KIRKUS REVIEW

In Minor’s (Until the Gull Returns, 2013) novel, an American woman travels to war-torn Algeria to investigate her journalist
twin sister’s death.

Mary is a newspaperreporter covering North Africa during
the 1990s, when Algeria was in the midst of a civil conflict. She travels to that
country to investigate the mysterious death of her college roommate, but she’s
killed when a suspicious explosion destroys her airplane. Janet, her surviving
twin who lives in New York City,grieves
over losing her sibling and decides that she has a duty to go to Algeria and carry
on an investigation into Mary’s death. She leaves behind a new romance and
follows her sister’s path through Tunisia and Algeria, meeting Mary’s friends
and colleagues and discovering that many are involved in fighting the war as
well as reporting on it. Janet finds herself under surveillance even before she
leaves the United States; she learns Algeria’s history from her seatmate on a
plane, who turns out to be spying on her. Janet disguises herself as an
American Muslim widow in order to infiltrate the journalists’ clique and
discover who’s betraying whom. Author Minor develops some compelling characters
and places them in an environment that’s rarely explored in fiction. However, the
author’s presentation is in need of a stronger edit. The book’s unusual use of
italics is distracting (“the name of that great little Tunisian
restaurant he’d raved about”), as is the choice to write out “missus” and
“mister” instead of typical abbreviations. Overall, the prose is often awkward
(“It was typical of Mary, with Janet’s feigned naivety, to con her into
many such a rendezvous”), and the story frequently delivers expository information,
such as the history of Islam, through long recitations from one character to
another.

A sometimes-engaging but
unpolished story of love, loyalty, and the bond between sisters.

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